Future stories
Work, or Ow, my soul
I wrote an essay in college called Chicago. Somewhat autobiographical, but this is not the intention. Vignettes include: Immigrant philosophies of ambition, my first desk as a four year-old girl, a meat packing plant, Wacker Drive. One chapter is titled, "My dad's boss throws chairs." I want to expand this piece. I recall a friend's description of his arrival at the O'Hare airport after a year spent backpacking around Hawaii. It was winter; he was high on shrooms, but nevertheless I can see it: The faces of strangers on the street: Pictures of wear, hardship, stress, the haggardly passage of time, life in an unforgiving concrete jungle. I drew a picture of a beautiful tropical flower inside of a cage, vines wrapped around the bars like the hands of a punished child, tendrils prying the keyhole. My idea is to print these out - hundreds of them. And post them all around the city. In elevators of high rises, on buses, taxicabs, inside the newspaper vending machine, on park benches, in public bathrooms. It would have those snipped ends that people can tear off and call the number: IF THIS MESSAGE SPEAKS TO YOU, PLEASE CALL... Except instead of a number, it would be a web site. People would be encouraged to share their stories. What does the picture make you think about? What does it make you feel? They would never even have to disclose their real name. It would be the story of the imprisoned souls of some of the brightest, most creative, ambitious minds of our time.
Broken Voices, or Crap, where did I put my instincts? ::fishes under sofa::
This one is inspired by my own stories of growing up with my mom. A learned psychoanalyst would describe it as a book about failed attachment and chronic childhood/adolescent trauma. But it would be written like a story instead of a textbook, so that people could feel it in the same way that they would feel a fiction. It would follow a depressed mother and her needy child throughout the course of their lives together. On one hand, it would be sad and frustrating, because the mother never learns to be a mother, and even after her daughter grows up and moves out, she still does not understand her. And the daughter abandons the relationship and moves on with her own life. But on the other hand, it is happy, because both mother and daughter are well, albeit separate, at the end of the story. And the existence of the book insinuates a lesson learned and communicated to hundreds of fellow mothers-potentially ending an epidemic of lost instincts and submitting a hopeful testament to our connectedness and dependence on one another for our success as a species.
I wrote an essay in college called Chicago. Somewhat autobiographical, but this is not the intention. Vignettes include: Immigrant philosophies of ambition, my first desk as a four year-old girl, a meat packing plant, Wacker Drive. One chapter is titled, "My dad's boss throws chairs." I want to expand this piece. I recall a friend's description of his arrival at the O'Hare airport after a year spent backpacking around Hawaii. It was winter; he was high on shrooms, but nevertheless I can see it: The faces of strangers on the street: Pictures of wear, hardship, stress, the haggardly passage of time, life in an unforgiving concrete jungle. I drew a picture of a beautiful tropical flower inside of a cage, vines wrapped around the bars like the hands of a punished child, tendrils prying the keyhole. My idea is to print these out - hundreds of them. And post them all around the city. In elevators of high rises, on buses, taxicabs, inside the newspaper vending machine, on park benches, in public bathrooms. It would have those snipped ends that people can tear off and call the number: IF THIS MESSAGE SPEAKS TO YOU, PLEASE CALL... Except instead of a number, it would be a web site. People would be encouraged to share their stories. What does the picture make you think about? What does it make you feel? They would never even have to disclose their real name. It would be the story of the imprisoned souls of some of the brightest, most creative, ambitious minds of our time.
Broken Voices, or Crap, where did I put my instincts? ::fishes under sofa::
This one is inspired by my own stories of growing up with my mom. A learned psychoanalyst would describe it as a book about failed attachment and chronic childhood/adolescent trauma. But it would be written like a story instead of a textbook, so that people could feel it in the same way that they would feel a fiction. It would follow a depressed mother and her needy child throughout the course of their lives together. On one hand, it would be sad and frustrating, because the mother never learns to be a mother, and even after her daughter grows up and moves out, she still does not understand her. And the daughter abandons the relationship and moves on with her own life. But on the other hand, it is happy, because both mother and daughter are well, albeit separate, at the end of the story. And the existence of the book insinuates a lesson learned and communicated to hundreds of fellow mothers-potentially ending an epidemic of lost instincts and submitting a hopeful testament to our connectedness and dependence on one another for our success as a species.